SCOOBY DOOBY DOO!

So you thought you needed a laser disk system
to run an interactive cartoon-based game? The Scooby Squad at Elite believe
otherwise.., we checked out progress on the Spectrum cartoon-action game which
should be released this month: SCOOBY-DOO

Eighteen months ago, a game called Blue Thunder
appeared on the market. Written by a lad called Richard Wilcox, it was
neatly tied in to the film and TV series which featured the mega helicopter of
the same name, and it was judged a Good Game. Indeed, it was awarded Game of
the Month status in Issue 3 of CRASH (in the days before the Smash had been
invented).

Work on Blue Thunder began when Richard took a look at some of the
Spectrum software available at the time and decided that he could do better. He
did. Roping in his father to help market the game, Richard Wilcox
Software came into being and Richard began a career as a games programmer.

About this time last year Kokotoni Wilf hit the streets - by then
Richard Wilcox Software had become Elite. Kokotoni was a pretty
good game, too, and things were looking good for Richard, and his father Brian -
they roped in another member of the family to assist with marketing and
organisational overheads of running a software house, Richard's brother,
Steve.

The opening screen of the
first action sequence. A bedroom in Auntie's castle. Shaggy is snoring in his
bed, while Scooby slumbers on a ledge. Note the picture - in haunted houses,
the eyes tend to move. Suddenly a trapdoor opens beneath Scooby and the
startled hound is sliding down a refuse chute...

For a while, Elite's fortunes took a bit of a dip. They got involved with
licencing deals and released a couple of titles which weren't so hot. They had
the licences, but the software let them down somewhat - Dukes of Hazzard
and 911TS. All the same, Fall Guy got a respectable rating, and
Grand National was better still. Their latest game puts them firmly back
in the running - Frank Bruno's Boxing narrowly missed being a CRASH Smash
and is doing well in the charts.

A conversion of International Basketball is nearing completion at
Elite's Aldridge headquarters, but another game is due for release this month
which could set Elite amongst the leading software houses. Yes, it's another
tie-in, but this time the game looks like it will do the licenced characters,
and Elite, proud.

Rather than produce a straight arcade adventure, the team of programmers
working on the game of the cartoon Scooby-Doo decided to try for a very
different game - a game in which you direct the action rather than play in the
more usual "up/down, left/right" modes.

From the very start of the project, the plan was to produce a form of
computer generated cartoon film, which starred the quintet of characters made
famous in their adventures on the TV screen. Scooby-Doo cartoons all
follow a similar storyline - the quartet of humans, aided and abetted by the
lovable, easily scared and permanently hungry hound, find themselves
investigating ghostly goings-on in a spine-tingling location.

While the artists in Elite's Scooby Squad began studying videos of the
cartoons, working out accurate animations from freeze framed action, the
programmers set about developing a system which allowed them to compress data
and combine screens and animation sequences so that a cartoon film could be
squeezed into the Spectrum.

The plot soon developed. Set in a Scottish castle, Scooby-Doo, the game,
features the ghost-hunting chums - Scooby, Shaggy, Fred, Daphne and Velma.
Shaggy's auntie owns the castle and has had spook trouble for sometime. She
finally decides to leave her home forever when who should turn up, but her
nephew Shaggy and his friends. Auntie is just leaving as they arrive and the
gang persuade her to let them have a go at getting to the root of her
hauntings.

Decision time as Scooby
slithers down the refuse chute - time for you, the player to interfere... If
you do nothing, Scooby will run into that central lump of stone and you will
lose valuable time as the stunned dog recovers from his ordeal. Left or right -
quick, make up your mind. You're in the driving seat, after all!

Auntie agrees, and decides to go away but only for a couple of days while
they try to sort things out for her- if they don't work out what's going on in
48 hours, however, she's leaving and never coming back.

Essentially, the game will feature seven or eight action sequences which are
separated by descriptive scenes in which characters in the game interact by
meeting together and having a chat. The whale game is played against the clock,
and to complete it you will need to go through all the levels and unmask the
'spook' who has been trying to scam Auntie off for so long.

In the action sequences you will follow Scooby and Shaggy as they search the
castle and need to help them solve (or avoid) problems as they arise and
generally guide them on their way. You drive the action in the game, acting
rather like a film director, taking decisions which affect the outcome of
events. After each action sequence has been played through, the scene will fade
to a descriptive section where you eavesdrop on conversations and can pick up
clues, tips and hints which will help you solve the mystery.

The cartoon quality of the game will be enhanced by the changing viewpoints
from which you, the player/director, see the action. For instance, as Scooby is
lolloping down a corridor you will see him full on, but when he nears a hidden
trapdoor the screen might zoom in to show a close up of Scooby's feet
approaching the danger spot. Then it's up to you to influence things.... Also,
the sound effects will be synchronised to the action - helping to create the
illusion that you are watching a cartoon and interfering with the outcome
rather than just playing a computer game.

To complicate matters, different problems will crop up in the same action
scene each time you load up and run the software - the game is not intended to
have a single solution. It won't be a single path; play it through once and
that's it, you know how to do the game.

When we visited the Scooby Squad they were confident that they had perfected
the cartoon generating system that they would use to edit the screens into the
finished game, and most of the design work on the individual screens - or
'shots' - from the storyboard had been committed to computer memory with the
animation sequences. A few final details needed working out, and then the
editing would begin. For with this game creating system, assembling the final
program is rather like editing a film or videotape. The raw material is all
there, as is the means to combine it into a sensible whole - it's the skill of
the editor that accounts for the polish of the finished product.

In the beginning, there was the text-only adventure game. Then came the
adventure game with graphics, which developed into the arcade adventure. Elite
could well take a significant step forward and become known as the creators of
the Cartoon Adventure. Scooby's a game to watch for...